In only it’s second season, the St. Petersburg Bowl has already established itself as an exciting bowl in a great venue. This year’s bowl will take place on December 19,2009, just hours after the first bowl of the season, and will likely pit teams from Conference USA against the Big East. There are contingencies in place, however, so if for some reason one of those two conferences does not attend, a team from the sun Belt Conference will be invited. The St. Petersburg Bowl is played at Tropicana Field, which is home to the Tampa Bay Rays and Major League Baseball.
This year’s game will be televised on ESPN and will be one of the first bowl games of the year, sharing opening day with the New Mexico Bowl, which will kick off only a few hours earlier. Fans in the Tampa and St. Petersburg area will be able to see a FBS college bowl game right in their back yard, and the inaugural bowl featured local team South Florida winning over the Memphis Tigers. While some fans think the bowl game system should be replaced with a playoff system, for now the bowl system allows teams to enjoy a postseason.
The St. Petersburg Bowl is played at Tropicana Field, which is primarily a baseball park, which means that seating can be awkward. This is often the case with multiple-use stadiums, but a new Rays ballpark may be in the works, and if so, the game will likely be moved. However, it is not uncommon for football games to share time with baseball, and cities must strongly consider multi-use stadiums in order to fully leverage the tax dollars spent on sports stadiums.
The St. Petersburg Bowl is one of several owned by ESPN, and the network will organize and televise the game once again. ESPN’s other bowls include the New Mexico Bowl, Armed Forces Bowl, Maaco Las Vegas Bowl, Hawaii Bowl and the PapaJohns.com Bowl. With several bowl games under their belt, ESPN is becoming proficient and promoting and organizing college football bowl games, and it’s possible they may organize more bowl games in the future.
The first St. Petersburg Bowl had loads of offense from the South Florida Bulls, with quarterback Matt Grothe tossing for 236 yards and three touchdown strikes. The Bulls routed the Memphis Tigers, 41-14, giving the hometown crowd something to cheer about from the relatively new South Florida team.
If you are looking for tickets to the St. Petersburg Bowl, be sure to shop around and check as many sources as possible. A good place to start is free online ticket comparison tools like TicketZinger.com, which shows all of the best available tickets at one time. You can also browse eBay or online classified ad sites, but remember that if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Fans looking for the best St. Petersburg Bowl tickets, see all of the cheapest tickets at one time at TicketZinger.com.